


Nightmares and Daydreams

by maria_j_harper



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Animal Death, Attempted assassination, Awkward Flirting, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Grief, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Past Abuse, Poison, Poison Effects, Poor Traumatized Babies, Slow Burn, Trust Issues, fear of showing weakness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 16:45:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8586088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maria_j_harper/pseuds/maria_j_harper
Summary: What do you get when you ask a young rogue who's only recently gotten over being brainwashed by a killer monster to guard another young rogue who's only recently gotten over being brainwashed (and mind controlled) by a different killer monster? (No, but really, was Vax playing matchmaker or what?)





	1. In Which A Dinner is Ruined by A Lack of Almonds

Cassandra was in a council meeting, making plans for managing the more mundane parts of running of Whitestone. You would think that the danger of dragons would make people realize that there were more important things in this world than which goats belonged to whom, but people could always surprise you, it seemed. Vox Machina had just left, and her feelings were torn on the matter. On one hand, when they were here Percy was here, and his presence made her feel so much less alone amid all the stressful trials of being a Lady in a time of crisis. On the other hand, whenever they showed up they always seemed to bring a new crisis that only added to her stress. Her hair was going to match Percy’s at this rate.  
Keeper Yemen brought up another grievance of the people that he would like her advice on handling, and she wondered if anyone still remembered that her nineteenth birthday had only been a couple of months ago. She was still getting used to saying “nineteen” when asked her age for Pelor’s sake, how was she meant to grow used to being a Lady? She was shaken from her state of worry by the discreet entrance of a man whose face she knew she’d seen before, but could not place.  
He walked strangely, as if purposely drawing attention to himself while still drawing as little attention to himself as possible, which was compounded by the slouching of his shoulders and the way he barely met anyone’s eyes for more than a second. He didn’t speak, merely relegated himself to the back of the room, against the wall just to her right. There he stood at something akin to attention, although his stance was slightly off and his fingers had a tendency to fidget with the snake shaped belt he wore.  
Wait… that’s where she knew him from! She had seen him with Vax’ildan and Vox Machina! Had they been introduced? Maybe? She thought she could remember a name… something like Calvin? Keven? Kynan, that was it, Kynan! He seemed content to wait there until the meeting was over to say whatever he came to say, so she only allowed her mind to linger on his presence for a moment before turning back to the much more pressing matter of whether the fruit of a tree that grew on one man’s property belonged to him or to the neighbor upon whose land it fell.  
When the council meeting was finally adjourned, she took a deep breath and massaged her temples as everyone exited, closing her eyes for a moment as she tried to rid herself of her own weariness. When she opened them again, only Kynan and a couple of castle guards remained. She rose and turned to him. “Hello, sorry to keep you waiting, what can I do for you?” Now that she was thinking about him again, she wondered whether Vox Machina had sent him to deliver a message, perhaps Vax’ildan had given his boy a note to deliver only to her hands? Some message of import and discretion about some new trouble afoot?  
“Actually, m’lady, it’s what I can do for you, um. V- that is, Vax’ildan asked me to keep you safe, be your sort of, um, bodyguard.” Kynan said, managing to slouch and tilt his head to give the illusion that he was looking up at her, even though he was certainly at least a foot taller than her.  
“I have guards, why did he think it was necessary to have you guard me?”  
He glanced at the castle guards. “W-well, I’m training as a rogue, you see, it’s a slightly different skill set. I guess he thought I’d be another kind of protection?”  
The poor boy seemed so uncertain of himself, all she wanted to do was reassure him, but well, she found herself asking what would her sister Whitney do? She raised her chin, drawing herself to her full height, and sniffed. “Well if you’re going to be my bodyguard you had better start acting like it. I need a guard dog, not a cowering pup.”  
“Y-yes m’lady.”  
“Y-y-yes, um, um, um, m’lady!” she mocked. “Where’s your pride? You were chosen by one of the greatest heroes in the land to safeguard one of the most important dignitaries in one of the last safe havens of Tal’dore! Learn to act like it.”  
Kynan looked down, scuffing his foot. Then he looked up, and for a moment she could see his hands clenching. Finally, the drew himself up to attention the way he had been while he’d been waiting for her. “Yes, m’lady,” he said stiffly.  
Cassandra nodded. “Better.” She walked out of the room, heading towards her study. “So, Vax’ildan told you to guard me, did he? What did he say, exactly?”  
“He just asked me to keep you safe. He was about to leave, and he asked me a few favors, and one of them was to keep watch over you.”  
Cassandra bit her lip. Vax’ildan had been the dashing rogue who had (stupidly) lept in to save her from Professor Anders, and nearly died bringing her from the brink of death, and while she knew he had confessed his love for Keyleth the very moment after that, she still couldn’t help the blush that rose to her cheeks. “Really? That was thoughtful of him, though I doubt I’ll be in any direct danger, at least, no more than anyone else. Besides, he mightn`t have told you this but I have some roguish tendencies of my own.”  
“Really? Well then I suppose he just thought that two rogues were better than one. As for you not being in danger… maybe, or maybe some idiots will decide that the dragons are the perfect scapegoats to blame your assassination on so that they can rise to power. Resources are stretched thin, people are scared and desperate, it’s honestly the perfect recipe for a brand new tyrant to take control. Best case scenario, my presence here will be pointless. Worst case scenario, well, I might be able to get a few good jabs in. I’m no Vax, I can’t defeat dragons, but I promise to do my best.” He smiled shyly. Cassandra got the feeling that shyly was how he did just about everything, and wondered how long it would take before he was trained out of it.  
“Well thank you, worst comes to worst I promise I’ll do my best to get a few good jabs in as well before we both get eaten.” He chuckled at her joke, and she smiled back at him.She noticed that although he looked like he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep for the last few days, his eyes twinkled when he laughed.  
They reached her study, and she sat down to her desk. “I have some paperwork I have to work on, it’s going to be awfully dull, so if you have any other place to be you’re welcome to go there.”  
Kynan stood himself against the wall near the door. “No m’lady, I wouldn’t leave you alone. If you were going to another meeting where guards were present, I might go and attend to my other duties, but for now I should stay.”  
“Call me Lady Cassandra, if you please. M’lady is fine for a general guardsman, but it seems you’re my self-assigned personal bodyguard. We wouldn’t want it to seem like you didn’t know your own lady’s name.”  
She gave him a smile with her correction this time, and was rewarded by a small smile in return as he gave her a slight bow and said “Yes, Lady Cassandra.”  
She turned her attention to the desk and the papers on it. Some needed to be read and signed, some needed to be finished being written, and they all had to go through her. Half way through her second document, she found herself making a wry joke to Kynan about its author. Only he wasn’t where he had been. In fact, looking around, she couldn’t find him anywhere in the room. Had he left to use the privy? Surely he would have let her know he was going. “Kynan?” she called out.  
“Yes? Is there something you need?” a small shadowy nook in the far corner of her room asked with Kynan’s voice.  
“N-no, just wondering where you were is all. I must admit, you had me a bit spooked.”  
Kynan came stepping out of the shadows, looking a bit bashful. “I did say I was a rogue,” he reminded her awkwardly.  
“Right, quite right, carry on then.” She gave him an awkward smile-grimace, feeling foolish, and turned back to her work.  
“I agree, by the way, about Lord Cecile, I just didn’t laugh loudly because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.”  
Cassandra turned to him with a frown, planning to accuse him of ass-kissing, but stopped when she saw he was smiling at her genuinely, if a bit awkwardly. “Have you met him?” she instead asked.  
“No, but his petition for tax exemptions seems to be based purely on the fact that he doesn’t like giving away money, never mind that he has more than he knows what to do with anyway, and more importantly, it’s not going to do him any good if he gets killed by dragons.”  
“Right. Well, back to our respective jobs then.” Cassandra said, fighting off the smile that was growing on her face.

 

Cassandra felt her eyes drooping and looked up from the endless pile of paperwork to realize that it had at some point become fuck-off o’clock. “Oh dear, it’s practically so late it’s early! Sorry, I shouldn’t have kept you up this late.”  
“Don’t worry about it, I wasn’t planning on sleeping until I was sure you wouldn’t need me anyhow. Night time is the assassin’s favorite time, after all.” Kynan stepped back out of the shadows he had secreted himself into while she was working. “You, on the other hand, have things you’ll be needing to do tomorrow… or later today, depending on how you look at it. You should be rested!”  
She smiled wryly, standing. “Pah, sleep? What’s sleep? Sleep is for the weak.”  
“Famous last words, Lady Cassandra. Everyone needs sleep. Come on, don’t worry, I’ll still be awake to keep you safe.”  
Cassandra smiled wearily and led the way out of her study to her room. She hadn’t felt comfortable taking the lord and lady’s chamber, since it held such uncomfortable connotations. It was, to her heart, a cursed place. It had been the Briarwoods’ after all, and before that… it had been her parents’, everyone who had slept there was dead. So she still slept in the same room she always had, small bed, writing desk, weapons on the walls, just the way she liked it.  
She entered the room, but stopped in the doorway when Kynan tried to enter with her. “This is my private room, you’re not allowed in here.”  
“Your private room, with your private window any halfling small enough could come in and kill you in your sleep. I don’t want to argue with you, Lady Cassandra, but if it’s your privacy you’re worried about, I promise not to watch you while you change into your nightclothes. I’ve been asked to ensure your safety, and I plan to do so to the best of my ability, so let me do so. Please?”  
Cassandra closed her eyes, letting out a sound between a sigh and a groan. She was in no mood to argue either, they could sort all this out in the morning. “Fine, just don’t touch anything.”  
Kynan followed her into her room, and perhaps any other time she might have found it in her heart to be embarrassed by the mess, but frankly she couldn’t summon the energy to care if she tried at the moment. “If you try anything even remotely indecent, I’ll have your fingers for a necklace,” she threatened before stepping behind her privacy screen to change into her nightgown.  
“And Vax would have my nose, and your brother would have my balls, I’m very aware, don't worry,” Kainin replied, tone anxious.  
“Good, finger necklaces were so last season.” Cassandra joked as she changed. Now clothed in a simple flowing nightgown, climbed into bed. “Good night, Kynan.”  
“Should I wake you up for breakfast, Lady Cassandra?”  
“No, don’t worry about it. I’ll wake up on my own.” She was asleep before she could hear his reply.

 

Kynan was watching the sky turn from indigo to cerulean through the window while trying to count the number of birdsongs he could hear (not a whole lot, most of them were still south for the winter) when he noticed a far more human sound. It was faint, but when he listened for it it was even clearer. Cassandra was whimpering in her sleep.  
He peeked out of his hiding place to get a look at her. Her brow was furrowed, lips brought into a tight frown, and she was tossing and turning agitatedly. Unfolding himself from the rather uncomfortable ball he’d curled up into to keep himself from falling asleep, he went over to her uncertainly. What should he do? Hesitantly, he moved closer. “Lady Cassandra, Lady Cassandra, you’re having a nightmare.”  
He could tell his words weren’t getting through, as she mumbled “no…” to whatever figure was plaguing her dreams. Deciding that waking her up was the best option, he shook her shoulder gently. “Wake up, Lady Cassandra, wake up!”  
Cassandra sat up with a sharp cry. Blinking, she turned shakily to look at Kainin. “Y-you? You have to get out of here, he’ll- he’ll make me-”  
“He’s won’t do anything, Lady Cassandra. It was just a bad dream.”  
“Oh. Oh, praise the gods.” She turned over and buried her face in her pillow.  
“Are you alright?”  
She turned to face him. “Yes, thank you for waking me. I really, really hate that dream.”  
“Would you like to talk about it?” Kynan asked carefully.  
There was a long pause, and he wondered what might be going through her head. Finally, she sat up and shook her head vigorously, as if she were shaking off the remnants of the dream. “No, thank you, I’m alright.”  
Kynan suspected that she was significantly less alright then she made it appear, but he didn’t press the matter. “Alright, well you should try and get a little more sleep, it’s still early.”  
“Nonsense! I’m already awake, I may as well get moving! Always so much to do!” And with that she got up and bustled herself behind her privacy screen.  
Her day was full of meetings and decision making and managing, and Kynan quickly found that each bout of bureaucracy was duller than the last. He found time to escape and go through training with Jarett, which left him sore and tired beyond words, though he still appreciated the lesson. Jarett was a good man and an impressive warrior, and although he worked him hard, Kynan knew that it was all so he could improve himself.  
He went to a few different guards and asked after Cassandra, who all told him she was in yet another meeting and that yes, there were never fewer than four people guarding her. Reassured by that, he found his quarters and prayed that the exhaustion he felt would grant him dreamless sleep.  
After his nap, he found out from a servant that Cassandra was in her study again, and if he wanted to make himself useful, he might as well take her diner to her. He obliged, and went to the kitchen where he was handed a covered tray of what smelled like almond roasted chicken. His stomach growled noisily, but he ignored it, telling himself he could get some food for himself later. He carried it up to Cassandra’s study and knocked on the door.  
“Yes? What is it?”  
He took that as his bidding to enter. “Sorry I wasn’t with you much today Lady Cassandra, like I said, I have other duties as well. Anyway, I’m here now, and I brought you food! So please don’t be mad.”  
“It’s fine, Kynan, thank you. I did just fine without you before, you know. Besides, just because I have to sit around listening to all that drivel all day doesn’t mean you should have to.” Cassandra said with a smile. She seemed to be in a good mood, despite the lack of sleep, and he wondered how in the world she managed to look so composed even with bags under her eyes.  
He couldn’t help smiling nervously back as he placed her food tray on her desk. “Well if that’s the case, I might go find some diner of my own before returning to my post, I’m famished.”  
Cassandra laughed. “Oh, you can have half of mine, they always give me too much. Honestly, just because I’m in charge doesn’t mean I have to have the king’s share of everything!” She removed the lid and began to cut into the chicken.  
“Wait a minute, let me see that.” Kynan had the plate off the desk before she could protest. Taking the keen dagger Vax had given him, he cut into the center of the chicken and carefully smelled the stuffing. “Fuck.” He threw the plate out the window.  
“What did you do that for?” Cassandra demanded, standing up.  
“There weren’t any almonds on it. I thought there might be some in the stuffing, but it was just regular cornbread.”  
“What? You threw out my diner just because it didn’t have almonds? Are you insane?”  
“No,” he said, tone patient. “I threw out your diner because it smelled like almonds. Which would have been fine, if it had almonds, but it didn’t. Almonds contain small trace amounts of a toxin you might have heard of called cyanide, which is one of the deadliest poisons around. This stuff was probably mined, almonds don’t have enough of it to actually do the trick, but lucky for us it still smells like them.”  
Cassandra took a moment to process this. “So… someone just tried to kill me?”  
Kynan shrugged. “Welcome to politics.”  
“You just saved my life.”  
He blushed slightly, but continued. “You should consider getting an official food taster, since someone’s trying to poison you. You’re lucky this person was a rookie who used too much cyanide, I might not have smelled it if they were a professional.”  
“I… I’ll think about it.” Cassandra sat back down in her chair, looking troubled.  
“Alright, you do that, I’m going to go find out who in the kitchen wants you dead, or failing that, who left the food alone.” Kynan mostly said the second part to make Cassandra feel a little better, the chances of it not being an inside job were slim to none.  
“W-wait. Send a guard to do it. I’d rather not be alone knowing that I almost just died.” He looked at her, and could see the raw fear in her eyes. For the first time, she looked her age, young and scared and uncertain.  
“Of course.” He bowed, and stepped out into the hall to flag down a guard. A platinum haired warrior in full plate responded, stepping into the room and bowing deeply to Cassandra.  
“How may I serve my lady?” he asked.  
“What’s your name?” Cassandra demanded.  
The guard saluted. “Raughley, Guardsman Alexander Raughley.”  
Cassandra picked up one of the vegetables that had fallen to the floor when Kynan had tossed the food out of the window. “Well, Guardsman Alexander Raughley, does this carrot taste like cyanide to you? No you idiot, don’t actually taste it! My bodyguard has discovered that someone put poison in my dinner and I need you to go find out who!”  
Raughley took a step back. “Yes, Lady Cassandra, of course. Who was it that brought you your dinner?”  
“Oh, uh, that’d be me.” Kynan gave a small wave.  
“And who are you exactly?”  
“Kynan Leore. Personal bodyguard of Her Ladyship Cassandra de Rolo. I’m new.”  
“Well, Mr. Imnew, where’s the poison dinner now?”  
“I threw it away, of course, it was poison!”  
“So let me get this straight… there was a poison that only you knew about, and you got rid of it before anybody could verify your claims? Your Ladyship... it is my suspicion that this newbie staged this so-called poisoning in order to prove his value, since he is, as mentioned, new and unproven.”  
Kynan’s eyes widened, and looked to Cassandra, who was looking at him with a puzzled expression. Shit. Shitshitshifuckshit! He grasped at the carrot she’d found as a last lifeline, pointing to it. “Well what about this? This was on the plate! We can get someone to do detect poison on it!”  
“Which will only prove that the food really was poisoned, probably by you. We don’t have any other new staff, who else would have done it? It’s Occam’s razor.” Raughley countered.  
“Wh-what? H-haven’t you ever heard of a long con? Plenty of killers and con men spend years building a false identity to get to their mark! I-I would never hurt Lady Cassandra, I promised to protect her.”  
“Which is why you made sure to be the one to both deliver and dispose of the poisoned food. A decent plan, really.”  
“That. Is. Enough.” Cassandra stood. She might have been a lady, but in that moment she held herself like a queen. “I have heard simply enough. You. How dare you?” Kynan looked at her worriedly, praying to every god he knew that the cold fury in her voice wasn’t directed at him. “How dare you impugn the honor of my personal bodyguard? Do you think I’m stupid? Or perhaps simply naive? ‘Oh, that Lady Cassandra, gods bless her darling little heart, doesn't know up from down!’ is that what you’re saying? If he is my bodyguard, then I have chosen to trust him with my safety, and if he is untrustworthy, then I must have chosen poorly, and if I have chosen poorly, I must not know up from down. But since I do know up from down, I would take it as a kindness if you went out and investigated the poison in my food, and if you find no better suspects than my bodyguard, then you may return and arrest him.”  
Kynan could swear he heard a cartoon sound effect for how quickly Raughley left the room. “Th-thank you. For trusting me.”  
Cassandra turned on him with an imperious look. “Don't thank me yet. I’m afraid that whether that guard was right or not, he had a point. Either he’s right, in which case you are off the job, or you simply made an extremely foolish rookie mistake, in which case, you are off the job. I don’t need a bodyguard who’s stupid enough to destroy evidence of a crime.”  
“But… but I promised to protect you!”  
“Yes, well I made no promises to tolerate you. Leave.”  
Kynan, left with no other choice, left, slouching dejectedly. Restless and uncertain of what course he should take, he spent most of his night walking the halls of Whitestone Castle, trying to think of what to do next.


	2. In Which A Plot Is Uncovered.

The next day, Kynan met with Jarett, who helped him teach a few of the more dexterous guards how to shoot the guns that were now kept in the castle. He was glad for Jarrett’s presence, because he might have the knowledge to teach, but he didn’t quite have the authority, while Jarett… well, the man knew how to get people to listen to him.  
The first training session went well enough, considering no one was permitted powder until Kynan was satisfied that they knew how to handle the individual mechanisms that made up each gun well enough to not shoot themselves in the foot or have it blow up in their face, but Kynan was glad when it was over. Mostly because he needed to talk to Jarett.  
“Hey Jarett, have you ever made a really rookie mistake?”  
“Hah! More than I care to count. Why?”  
“Someone tried to kill Lady Cassandra yesterday, and well, I might have sort of thrown evidence out of a window for dramatic effect. So now I'm fired for destroying evidence!”  
Jarett laughed heartily. “Oh, my young friend! This is priceless. Well, do not feel too foolish. Eighty percent of all stupid mistakes are made trying to impress a lady, no? Come, walk with me.”  
Kynan hurried after Jarrett. “Wait a minute! I wasn’t trying to impress her! Not the way you mean! Hey! Where are we going?”  
“Well, that is the window of the lady’s study, yes?” Jarett pointed out one of the castle’s windows. Kynan shrugged in response, not as sure of his own spacial awareness as Jarett seemed to be. “So a plate thrown from there would most likely land… here.” Sure enough, the platter and several vegetables lay strewn about on the castle lawn. “But of course, then some animal would find it and run off with the chicken to the woods.” He led the way, following some trail Kynan couldn’t discern. “Until it naturally succumbed to the poison, which, depending on the size of the animal, would most likely be somewhere around… ah, there.”  
A mongrel dog lay on the ground, mouth lolling open and crusted with vomit, eyes glassy, three large black flies crawling across its face. Kynan gasped. “Oh no.”  
Jarett went and picked up the dog, slinging its body over his shoulder. “Get the chicken, and maybe do not throw it out a window this time. It is still evidence.”  
Kynan lowered his eyes, and picked up the remains of the poisoned chicken solemnly. “Jarett, what does a man do when everything he touches turns rotten?”  
“He learns, he grows, he does not give up. He never gives up, not on himself and not on the world. You think you are the first person who, with the best intentions, killed an innocent creature? You, at least, did it accidentally.” Jarett had the wisdom not to add that it was only one dog, he knew how guilt worked. The smallest of trespasses were the most condemning in the court of a person's own conscience.  
“It’s not just this though, it’s everything! I tried to join Vox Machina, but I wasn’t ready and got knocked out, I tried to find my place in the world with Ripley but wound up aiding a madwoman bring more violence and destruction to it, I tried to protect Lady Cassandra, but killed a dog doing so! ...Perhaps my father was right, perhaps I was better off being the son of a butcher.”  
“No, I do not think so. Besides, could you go back to being that boy if you tried? Better to make the most of what you have. Work with your skills and improve on the ones you want to improve, use the tools and resources available to you, and do not give up. The last one is the most important one. You say the lady does not want you protecting her anymore? But that does not mean she no longer needs protection, does it? So you must continue to protect her, no matter what.”  
Kynan folded his fingers together uncertainly, thinking over Jarett’s advice. Part of him wondered whether Cassandra might not be better off without his bumbling protection, but remembered that Vax’ildan had asked him to do this as a means to redeem himself. If he couldn’t do it, if he just gave up, he might as well just return the daggers and Simon and go home. “Ok, so how do I redeem myself then?”  
“I dunno, but my guess is that the opportunity will arise. Perhaps turning in the people who tried to poison her would be a good start.” Jarrett approached a guard. “Excuse me, we have found evidence related to the assassination attempt on the lady. Who do we give it to?”  
“Guardsman Raughley is leading the investigation, sir, best talk with him.”  
Fan-fucking-tastic.

 

Raughley looked, if anything, even more like a knight in shining armor from some ridiculous picture book than he had the evening prior. He questioned Jarett about Kynan’s various comings and goings, as they waited for a magic user to come use Detect Poison on the chicken and dog. “You took a nap? Can anyone confirm your whereabouts during this ‘nap?’”  
Last night Kynan had been too bewildered to ask too many questions, but now he found himself wondering, “Why are you so suspicious of me, Raughley? I- I haven’t done anything to you and you act like I’m some sort of monster!”  
“Let me see, you’re a rogue with a knowledge of poisons, so you had the means, you’re new, which as we established gives you motive, and your convenient little nap followed by serving the food gives you opportunity. Gosh, why would any trained professional think that maybe you were the culprit?”  
“Don’t take it personally kid, no one wants to think that they might have been living under the same roof as a murderer for weeks and letting them slide by right under their nose. Blaming the new guy is just humanoids' nature.” Jarett gave Kynan a reassuring pat. “I can tell you he was definitely sleeping, boy snores like a bear with hay fever.”  
“No I don’t!” Kynan protested.  
“Ok, but I didn’t think you wanted people knowing about the sleeptalking. Snoring seemed like decent alternative.”  
Raughley made something between a sigh and a chuckle. “Alright, thank you for your cooperation. If you find any other information that might be relevant, please don’t hesitate to contact me.”  
“Sure,” Kynan agreed, although, what with the way Raughley had been treating him, he honestly wasn’t sure that he would tell the man “fire!” if the castle were burning down. “What about you? Have you found anything?”  
“Not yet, we’re still working on questioning the entire kitchen staff. Truth be told, we’re undermanned and overstretched. If you really want to protect the Lady, I’d appreciate your help.” Raughley fixed him with a piercing look that very clearly said ‘I’m giving you one chance to prove me wrong about you, you’d better not fuck it up.’ Kynan had seen that look often enough to know.  
“Ok, thanks. Could you point me to the servants’ quarters? Questioning might be all well and good for you, but people lie. I think it might be faster to just look and see who’s got cyanide hidden in their bedding.”  
“I can do better then that, I can show you. Looking will go faster with two sets of eyes, won’t it?” Raughley smiled, and Kynan realized that he might be younger than he’d first assumed. The idealistic naivety that showed in his face was a dead giveaway.  
“Maybe normally, but we wouldn’t want to tip off the person we’re looking for, would we? Trust me, the fewer people the better. Oh, that reminds me, nobody’s just up and vanished recently, have they? Because if they have, they might be running from something.”  
“No, that was the first thing we made sure of, everyone knows that if they run, they’re suspect number one. The servants quarters are down the corridor from the kitchen, left door’s the women’s room, right’s the men’s.”  
“Good, thank you Raughley. I appreciate your trust in me, I really do.” Kynan gave Raughly a quick salute, before turning to Jarrett. “Thank you too, for everything.”  
Jarett shrugged. “Think nothing of it, I’d do the same for anyone my employers saddled me with.” He cracked a sideways grin as he said this, and tousled Kynan’s hair.  
Kynan fended off Jarett, ducking away and scurrying off towards the servant’s quarters. He started with the left door, because the fact of the matter was that the whole stereotype about poison being a woman’s weapon was somewhat true, not always, but in a way that was statistically significant.  
As it was early in the day, the quarters were empty of people, and he began a systematic searching of each pallet of straw that showed use. After not finding anything in the beds, he moved on to the bedside tables, and finally caught a break looking into a tin of cosmetics. The label read Drop Dead Gorgeous Cosmetics, which both amused and intrigued him as he picked it up and opened it. It appeared to genuinely contain cosmetic products (oh dear, he hoped he got to see Cassandra’s face when she found out!) but it also contained a small vial, mostly empty, labeled Poison in scrawling font. Searching the bottom for a name, he found Hyacinth written in the same font. ...He had known that this person was a rookie, but damn.  
Slipping the tin into his pocket, he headed straight towards the kitchen. Understaffed the castle might be, but the kitchen was still a whirl of activity, cleaning up from lunch while also beginning the early preparations for dinner, and as he entered Kynan found himself wondering how he would find Hyacinth in all this chaos. He found a quiet corner where he could stand unobtrusively to watch and observe while being unwatched and unobserved himself. Anyone could be a suspect. Was that girl’s skin abnormally pale, or was she simply fae born? Then he noticed one girl acting strangely. Her half orc skin might have thrown him off if she weren’t clutching her stomach and being berated by the head chef. “Well if you were sick, why didn’t you stay in bed?”  
“Excuse me Hyacinth? I’m here to see you to the nearest paladin or cleric, magical healing might be the only way to help you right now.” Kynan interrupted.  
Hyacinth looked around at him. “What? No, it’s just a stomach bug, I’ll sleep it off.”  
Kynan shook his head. “No, you won’t, trust me. Please, come with me now, your life depends on it.” He took Hyacinth by the arm, who followed reluctantly. He took her back through the halls to where Raughley was still doing his work. “Raughley, would you mind helping me take this girl to wherever you put people who are a danger to themselves and others?”  
“Are you turning yourself over then? Sorry, bad joke, bad joke. You found her?”  
“Don’t go too rough on her, she’s definitely not the mastermind behind the assassination. Just a pawn.”  
At this point, Hyacinth seemed to realize that she was not being taken to a healer. “What? Assassination? I didn’t have anything to do with that! I swear, it wasn’t me!”  
“What’s your evidence against her?” Raughley asked. Kynan explained, and he chuckled slightly. “Ok, I see what you mean. Poor girl. I’ll send someone to get a paladin for her, you go ahead and let Lady Cassandra know we’re going to need to hold a trial.”

 

It was a small trial, just the Lady Cassandra, the accusers, and the defendant. Cassandra found herself pondering one accuser in particular. He hadn’t even been fired for a whole day and Kynan was somehow in front of her once again. Of course, he was now giving testimony against a would-be assassin rather than guarding her, but even so, it was strange. Although, it was nowhere near as strange as his story.  
“This girl, Hyacinth, was promised a great deal of money to kill you. She was provided the materials for doing so without really knowing what they were, and attempted to poison you because she was convinced it was her best option. She also, in a rather ironic twist, hid said poison in a tin of cosmetic arsenic, which I suppose is actually rather clever. Who’s going to guess you put secret poison in with the regular poison you use to make yourself pretty?” The girl in question looked shamefaced and perhaps still a little nauseous. She was lucky that no one had time to attend such a small trial, for an audience doubtlessly would have only harmed the situation.  
Now Geoff, a young paladin of Malora who had originally been from Emon, stepped forward. “I was able to, using Zone of Truth, determine that she received threats towards her family in case she didn’t comply. She’s scared, and understandably shaken, so I don’t know who has been pulling the strings yet.”  
“But that’s not the matter at hand,” Raughley said. “The matter at hand is what you think should be done with her.”  
Cassandra paused, thinking it over. Finally, she spoke. “First of all, Geoff? Please get my approval before using Zone of Truth again in my castle. I realize that it’s sometimes necessary, but as someone who’s felt the influence of behavior altering magic, I have a natural wariness of it.”  
“Oh, of course m’lady.”  
“Thank you. Now, Hyacinth and her family are all to be placed in protective custody, they will stay in one of the empty rooms of the castle- gods know we have enough of them. They are to be guarded at all times. Hyacinth, you are officially under castle arrest, if you leave the premises without an escort you will be taken back by force. Hyacinth and her family are to remain in custody until we catch the person responsible for all of this, for their own protection.”  
Hyacinth gazed up wonderingly at Cassandra, and began to cry. “Thank you my lady, thank you.”  
“For the crime of poisoning my food, however, Hyacinth is forbidden from working in the kitchen. She will work one month in the stables, and after that may be placed wherever she fits best, so long as se is never near the kitchen.”  
“You are more than fair Lady Cassandra, I don’t deserve such kindness, I…”  
“Stop. Your family was in danger, there’s nothing else that needs to be said. I hope I can expect your loyalty in the future though?”  
“Yes, of course!”  
“And… there is one more thing I’m going to need to add to your sentance. Along with the one month of manual labor, I’m also going to need you to complete one month of therapy, after which there will be a follow-up assessment of whether or not the therapy needs to continue.” Clearly a woman who put arsenic on her face had some self worth issues to work through, Cassandra thought.  
There were more thanks, bows and curtsies all around, and the people began to leave the room. “Kynan, stay a moment,” Cassandra found herself calling out.  
Kainin obediently came back towards her. “Yes, Lady Cassandra?”  
“You did an exceptional job, you know. I’m not talking about Hyacinth, she was sloppy and probably could have been caught by anyone given due time, I’m talking about how you handled yourself just now. You didn’t stammer or slouch, you spoke confidently. Also, all this talk of poison has made me realize that I’ve been focusing perhaps too much on the espionage and information gathering aspects of roguery. Therefor, I’d like to offer you back your position as my bodyguard, on the condition that you teach me everything you know about poisons, as well as anything else you might know to supplement my skills.”  
Kynan’s face went from startled to delighted, and when his face lit up, Cassandra couldn’t help but smile as well. The man smiled like that so rarely, a big uninhibited grin that went all the way to his eyes and even to the way he held himself, of course he drew out happiness in others as well. “Yes, of course Lady Cassandra, I’d be delighted to help. Thank you!”  
“I’d also like your help finding whoever put Hyacinth up to poisoning me. Perhaps we can question her later today once her family is safe.”  
Kynan hesitated, giving her an uncertain look. “Don’t you have more important things to do than investigate your own attempted assassination?”  
“Yes, but they’re all boring! If something intriguing didn’t happen soon, I was considering hiring an assassin to kill me myself just for the fun of it! Cassandra joked, before realizing that probably didn’t sound very good. “I mean, not that I want to die or anything, I just... ever since I was little I was poking my nose where it didn’t belong, spying on everyone and hoarding their secrets in my head. When the Briarwoods took over, well, they were quite a significant obstacle. Figuring out ways to go around them, to defy them, it was like a puzzle. Now all I have is boring bureaucratic nonsense and fucking dragons in the sky, neither of which I know how to handle.”  
“Your rogue skills are itching to be used, I know the feeling,” Kynan said with a small sympathetic smile. “It wasn’t especially exciting being the son of a butcher either. Well, except when I was the son of a drunk butcher and had to practice my stealthing skills to... but never mind that. So, can you tell me the five different types of poison that can be used?”  
Cassandra smiled. “I have another meeting to go to, but I suppose I can tell you on the way. Um, let’s see, there’s venom from monsters and animals, or poison I suppose if you want to go all the way to the tropics, poisonous plants, poisons that can be mined, apparently, and of course, magical poison.”  
“Not bad, I always remembered it: herbal, animal, monstrous, mineral, magical. Sorry to quiz you like this, but I have to know what you already know if I’m going to teach you.”  
“It’s no problem, honestly it’s refreshing. Too many people walk on eggshells around me, being treated like just another person for once is nice.” Cassandra stopped, realizing that perhaps she was acting a little too relaxed, speaking a little too freely to someone she knew so little about. She wasn’t allowed to be just a regular person, not anymore. Luckily they reached the council room before she had time to say anything else. “I’ll be done with all of this at seven o’clock this evening, meet with me then in front of my study.”  
Kynan nodded, and opened the door for her to pass through before departing.

 

Cassandra hurried as much as she could, forgetting her ladylike decorum and breaking into a run as soon as she was sure no diplomats would see. Hyacinth’s family had been moved into Oliver and Whitney’s room an hour ago, which meant that she was going to get to question Hyacinth! She reached her study to find Kynan waiting for her, back leaned against the door. “Ready? We’re going to go ask Hyacinth a few questions.”  
“What? I thought I was going to teach you about poisons,” he said, following after as she breezed by him towards the room she knew Hyacinth and her family would be.  
“Maybe we would have, if this hadn’t happened first!” Cassandra let her excitement carry her through the halls where she used to play tag with her siblings, past the door to Vesper’s room, and into Whitney and Oliver’s former room. But as excited as she was, that still didn’t stop it from feeling like a punch in the gut when she saw two young children chasing each other with toy swords. They were both boys, and half orcs besides, but she still couldn’t help seeing her siblings in them.  
“Boys, settle down. Settle down please! You are making disgraces of yourself and this family!” a homely woman scolded before curtsying to Cassandra. “My Lady, you grace us with your presence.”  
“Oh, um, don’t worry about it. Tell them they’re free to play with anything in here, it’s not like it’s being used by anyone else.” She looked around at the family, noticing how cramped a married couple and their three children would be in a room meant for only two rambunctious twins. “Damn, I told the guards we had plenty of room and they cram you all in here? Why don’t you let the boys stay in this room and the rest of you can stay elsewhere?”  
“We wouldn’t want to be any trouble,” the father protested.  
“And we’d rather all be in one place so we can keep an eye on our children. I thought our Hyacinth’s days of misbehaving were over, and she goes and poisons your chicken! And I thought we raised her right…” said the wife.  
“It wasn’t her fault,” Kynan said, and something in his voice turned almost defensive, like it was him and not Hyacinth being criticised. Cassandra gave him a puzzled look, but whatever was bothering him, he seemed to shake it off. “But we do need to talk to her. Hyacinth, will you step out with us for a moment?”  
Hyacinth nodded. “Of course.” She followed Cassandra and Kynan as they led her outside. “Thank you for this, my family might not be the easiest people to love, but no family ever is.”  
Cassandra looked down and to the left to hide her sorrow, she would give anything for one more fight with her family. “No, I suppose not,” she agreed. “But you know that this hospitality isn’t free, don’t you? I’d offer to go get Geoff and his Zone of Truth spell, but I doubt we’ll need that, right?”  
“Yes, of course. I’m not sure how much I can tell you though, the man who spoke to me… he wore a mask.”  
“What kind of mask?” Kynan inquired.  
“A green dragon mask.”  
“Did they walk a certain way? Talk a certain way?” Cassandra pursued.  
“Not that I noticed. Sorry, I wish I could be more helpful.”  
“You can, Hyacinth, we just need to figure out how,” Kynan said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “You need to tell us everything you remember about the man, what did he wear? What race did he seem? What did his voice sound like? Did he wear cologne, or have any other distinctive smells about him? Even the smallest detail might help.”  
“He… he smelled like potpourri. Like… roses and cloves and orange peel. He might have been elvish? I couldn’t see his skin, he wore a sort of robe that covered pretty much his entire body… it was decorated with flowers. He sounded… sly, sort of, in the tenor range? Is that what you call it? Does that help?”  
“It can’t hurt,” Cassandra assured her. “What was his build like? Was he tall, short, thin, stout?”  
“He- he was short for a guy, but taller than me, I remember. He was skinny, I think. The robes made it hard to tell.”  
“Did he give you anything else besides the poison?” Kynan asked.  
“No, nothing.”  
“Are you sure?”  
“Yes.”  
Kynan looked to Cassandra who nodded. “He never told you anything, I assume,” she posited.  
“He referred to a group, when he threatened my family he said ‘we will find you,’ not ‘I,’ but he never mentioned any names.”  
Cassandra sighed. “Of course not, that would be too simple! Well thank you for your help Hyacinth, go ahead back to your family.”


	3. In Which Memories Are Visited

As Hyacinth closed the door behind her on her way back inside, Kynan looked to Cassandra for guidance. “What will we do now?”  
Cassandra cleared her throat. “Well, we alert the guards, and then… I think I’d like to visit the music room. Seeing those children in Whitney and Oliver’s room… reminded me of something that’s there that I’d like to find.”  
“Who are Whitney and Oliver?”  
Cassandra looked at him, trying to discern how much she could tell him without making him pity her. “How much do you know about how the Briarwoods seized power over Whitestone?”  
“Not much,” Kynan admitted. “I’m not from here.”  
“Whitney and Oliver were two of my six older siblings, until the Briarwoods came. They imprisoned us each separately. Father, mother, Julius, Vesper and Percy. I suppose they thought knew the most, so they were the ones who were tortured for information. The rest of with they just toyed with until our entertainment value wore off, or in Ludwig’s case, just gave out under the strain and died. Percy and I are the only ones who survived.”  
There was a long pause, finally broken by the exclamation of “Fucking hell!”  
Cassandra smiled. “I’m sorry, I don’t normally talk about it, but it seemed like something you ought to know. I mean, everyone else does.” She walked on, and kept walking until she found a guard who could tell another guard to get a pen and paper and write down the suspect description they had gathered from Hyacinth. Kynan, she noticed, took a moment to catch up, but hurried to fill in the guard on any details she might have forgotten about.  
Once this was done, she headed for the music room, Kynan trailing behind her solemnly. She gave him a sharp look as they stood before the piano, past the double doors that led to the room. “I would ask you to wait outside, please.”  
“No. Sorry Lady Cassandra, I can’t in good conscience leave you alone right now.” Kynan raised his chin proudly.  
She smiled. “You know, this is a really inconvenient time for you to grow a spine. I need to take time to remember my family, and… and I’ll probably wind up crying.” Her voice broke, and she felt her eyes begin to water. “And, and I have to seem strong, so… I can’t let anyone see me cry. Understand?”  
Kynan searched her face, though for what she didn’t know. “You are strong though, and no one would fault you for crying over your family. See? You’re crying right now and I don’t think any less of you, if anything I respect you more. You’re human.”  
She sobbed, and when he uncertainly reached out to comfort her with a hug she clung to him desperately like a lifeline. “A Lady can’t be human… she has to be more. For her people, she has to be able to be strong, perfect, fair, firm, she has to be… everything,” she whispered against the shoulder of his leather armor.  
“Who says? There are plenty of nobles who are terrible, greedy or lazy or just stupid. You’re good. You’re smart. You do everything you can, which is a lot by the way. I’d say you’re the best noble I ever met. Of course… you’re also the only noble I ever met, but still.”  
Cassandra appreciated his attempt to lighten the mood, and let out a small chuckle even as she continued to cry. “Thank you, but… I can’t help thinking that just about anyone would do a better job at this than me. I’ve tried to do things the way Mother would have done them, or how Vesper would have done them, or how Whitney would have done them, but I can’t help feeling like an impostor in Lady’s clothes. Julius was groomed for this, Vesper was trained in case he failed, even Ludwig could probably do a better job than I have. Hell, Whitney and Oliver were never really trained, but I bet Ladyship would have come naturally to Whitney easily enough what with how bossy she always was.”  
“Well now, that’s your problem then.” Cassandra looked up to see a gentle smile on Kynan’s face. “A wise man once told me you’ve got to work with what you’ve got and play to your strengths. I think, instead of trying to be a Lady like your mother or your sisters, you should just be a Lady like you. Things might be a little easier that way.”  
Cassandra scowled and pulled away from the hug. “What does that even mean?”  
“I’m not actually sure, wise men tend to be cryptic like that. I think it’s sort of open to personal interpretation though. So… you said you left something in this room?”  
She nodded, and went to the window seat, a long bench that came off the sill. She sat on one side and lifted the seat cushion of the other, revealing a trove of forgotten things. First she pulled out a small wind-up carriage. She held it in her hands like a holy relic, with solemn care. “This was Ludwig’s when he was younger, I don’t really remember, but he gave it to Oliver when he deemed himself too old to play with it anymore, and Oliver kept it. Percy made it, of course.” She set it down, and pulled out a sheaf of sheet music. “Vesper used to always play the piano for us to help us learn Celestial, and… here it is. Mother’s embroidery. She would stitch, and Vesper would play, and sometimes Father would come and play with us kids. This was the room everyone went to when we wanted to spend time together, as a family, all the best memories are here.”  
Kynan said nothing, simply sat on the floor where she’d placed the carriage and inspected it. When she remained silent for a time, however, he prompted her to continue by saying, “You must miss them.”  
“I think Vesper is who I miss the most. It’s not that I didn’t love the others as much, it’s just that we didn’t spend as much time together. There’s less there to miss. Father was always busy, and he was grooming Julius which meant that he was always busy with Father. The same goes for Mother, and anyone who tells you that her tea parties were any less political than Father’s meetings with men, cigars, and scotch is lying. Ludwig was kind of standoffish, though Percy always told me he was just going through a moody phase and that it would pass, never mind Percy’s own perpetual moody ‘phase.’” She chuckled. “Whitney and Oliver were fun to play with sometimes, but then they’d whisper to each other or run off together to their room to play alone. It seemed like they only saw two types of people, ‘My Twin’ and ‘Not My Twin.’ Vesper… Vesper was sort of like Percy, passionately excited about a million and one projects. Granted, her projects were charities and painting and the like, and so had less of a tendency to burn people’s eyebrows off, but still. She was kind to everyone, and sort of acted like a stand-in for Mother when she wasn’t around.”  
“What about Percival? What was he like back then?”  
“Oh, Percy was always my favorite. He might have been a little reclusive, always in the library or his workshop, but we spoke the same language. I think he respected the fact that I backed up my nosiness with an actual talent for finding information that didn’t want to be found.” Cassandra smiled. “I’m happy to still have him, even if he’s not around as much as I would like.”  
Kynan nodded. “I get that. ...I don’t really remember my mom. She left when I was young and well, I tended to stay away from home a lot. It was always the same pattern. Dad would get drunk, sometimes he’d hit me and sometimes he’d say things like it was my fault she left, and I honestly preferred getting hit. Then I’d run away, live alone for a while however I could, until I got in trouble too deep and he had to come bring me home. Which, of course, just gave him another thing to yell about next time. Even so, once a month, on a sunday, he’d take me out fishing. He- he’d bring just two beers, one for him and one for me. I don’t miss much else about home, but… I miss fishing.” He waited, as silence stretched out between them. “Sorry, I just thought… you told me about your family, so…”  
“Don’t be sorry, I’m glad you told me. Thank you for listening, I do feel a bit better, strangely.”  
“It’s nice knowing you’re not the only one who’s hurting, misery loves company I suppose.”  
She chuckled. “That’s not what that means. ...Anyway, I suppose I’ll forgive you for not leaving when I asked you to, on the condition that you come with me now to the kitchen. Crying always leaves me feeling hungry, I need some comfort food stat.”  
As they each wolfed down a generous slice of pound cake the head cook had been saving for the next day, they exchanged glancing looks that skirted away whenever one saw the other looking. The decision to become friends, to provide this lonely person in such desperate need of a family with at least some sort of human connection, happened almost simultaneously.  
Becoming friends, however, was something that neither of them had a very good idea of how to do. Both had been so isolated for so long, neither of them quite knew where to start. Therefore, they found themselves lapsing into an awkward silence until Cassandra declared that she was tired and that she wished to go to bed. Kynan stood watch over her as he had the first night, and she allowed him to because somehow, despite knowing him for such a short span of time, she trusted him.

 

When Cassandra woke, she saw that Kynan had somehow managed to fall asleep while perched on the armrest of her settee. His legs were tucked into his chest with his arms folded over them, his head rested on the crook of his elbow. How tired must he have been to fall asleep like that? Quite tired indeed, she imagined, remembering the constant dark circles under his eyes. Yet even so, it seemed he could get no peaceful rest, as he murmured in a distraught tone.  
“No. No Anna, please! Please Anna! I can't… please.”  
Cassandra gave him a little push so that he tipped off of his perch and onto the settee. Better than startling him awake and making him fall to the floor, she figured.  
He hit the cushioned surface of the settee with an “Uff!” and his hands immediately went to his daggers as he sprang to his feet. He took a moment to take in his surroundings, looking for any threat.  
“You fell asleep,” Cassandra informed him brusquely before disappearing herself behind her privacy screen.  
“I did? Oh Serenre damn it! I didn't disturb you too much, did I? I've been known to sleep babble.”  
“No, though I am curious who Anna is. An old flame of yours perhaps?”  
“Gods no,” Kynan spat, and Cassandra didn't have to see his face to hear the venom in his tone. “She was… my last employer. I did some things I'm not proud of, under her employ. I'd… rather not talk about it. I came here to turn over a new leaf.”  
“Of course, I understand completely.” Cassandra thought how he couldn't possibly realize just how much she understood. She knew a thing or two about regret. Now dressed, she stepped out to do her hair in front of her vanity. As she brushed it, she noticed that a few more of her brown hairs around her temples were showing white at the roots and pursed her lips. She attempted to hide the streaks of white amid the brown, but a few strands managed to show through. Eventually giving it up as a lost cause, she tied her hair back in her usual bun, as she felt it made her look more mature. She nodded at the woman in the mirror, thinking that even if she didn't feel like she could handle this, at least she looked the part.  
“Important meeting today?” Kynan asked.  
“Hah, I wish. The only thing worse than unnecessary bureaucracy is unnecessary aristocracy. Unfortunately it seems I have no means out of either party. I’m having tea at Duke Florin’s manor. You’ll be coming with me, of course, but I’ll have to ask you to say as little as possible. Speak only when you’re to, and then as few words as possible.” She grimaced. “These people think that you have to have blue blood to even converse with them, and if you even think about acting to the contrary it will reflect badly on my reputation. Normally I wouldn’t overly care what anyone thought, but if political connections can be made in that room, that will set up potential for future deals and trade, we can bring the resources to Whitestone that it so sorely needs. This is too important to mess up.”  
“Perhaps then, I should remain here, Lady Cassandra. The mere fact that you just told me not to mess this up for you nearly guarantees that I will.” Kynan chuckled slightly.  
“Nonsense, a personal bodyguard is almost as good as a piece of fine jewelry,” Cassandra said as she draped a necklace of the green whitestone gems and silver across her neckline. “It’s a symbol of status. Bring a few lozenges if you must, that’s what mother used to have me do when I tagged along. She said, any time I had the urge to say something, I should have a lozenge instead. It worked, usually.” She smiled.  
“What about Hyacinth though? Shouldn’t I stay here to investigate all that?”  
“No, where I go, you go. If you want to investigate, we will… as soon as I have a few minutes to spare for such things.”  
“So, never?”  
“No, the weekend should be relatively quiet, we’ll do it then.”


	4. In Which Passive Aggression Leads To An Awkward Encounter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See the end of the chapter for footnotes.

The carriage ride to the duke’s was uneventful, Kynan rode next to the driver while Cassandra sat inside, thinking. When they arrived, what struck Kynan was the sheer amount of color. The manor itself was a simple white, trimmed with sky blue, and it was sided by shrubberies sculpted to look like horses that looked skeletal without their leaves, but the inside was opulent to the extreme. Whitestone Castle had some decoration, but it was all very tastefully austere and gothic, black, red, purple, and dark blue dominated the color palette, rich but subtle. This manor was the peacock to Whitestone’s raven, bright colors that made his head spin as his eyes couldn’t seem to be able to settle on which decoration he should be looking at. Everything seemed to shout, in a voice that was entirely too loud to be believable, “We’re rich! We have everything we could possibly want! Look how happy we are!”  
They were shown to the drawing room by a butler who reminded Kynan a bit of a cat with his black tailcoat over a white shirt and matching white gloves, and there they were greeted by their hosts. Duke Florin stood and bowed shortly, before going right to the card game that was going between a few of the guests. Lady Florin clasped Cassandra’s hands and kissed the air next to both of her cheeks. “Darling, I’m so glad you could make it! You haven’t been in society properly since all that business with the Briarwoods, you simply must visit more often!”  
Cassandra made her way to one of the chairs, sitting among a group of women who all seemed to be keen to gossip. Kynan stationed himself against the wall, standing at attention the way Jarett taught him and watched the conversation curiously. “Yes, I’m afraid I’ve have precious little time to be social, having a city to run. The council helps immensely with the matters of politic, but…” Cassandra was saying.  
“But it’s no replacement for a husband, is it? It’s been what? A year since you came out?* How do you not have a ring on that finger yet?” The woman to her left asked.  
“Well… I suppose that courting wasn’t really a priority for me at the time. I was a little more preoccupied with being a prisoner in my own home, living with an evil sorceress and her vampire husband, and the like,” Cassandra said, mimicking the woman’s cheerful tone with a saccharine smile.  
“That’s right, you poor dear, I had completely forgot,” Lady Florin lied. “It must have been so horrible for you. The Briarwoods always seemed so charming in public, but they must have been monsters behind closed doors. How did you ever survive?”  
Kynan clenched his fists, and took a lozenge. These women were asking Cassandra to recount her nightmares for their own entertainment, it was a game to them!  
Cassandra, however, seemed unaffected. The cool, collected way she spoke brought some peace to him as she responded, “By doing what they said, mostly. They weren’t always terrible, often times they treated me like I really was their adoptive daughter, and if I behaved the way they wanted me to they could even seem like they really cared about me. And of course, if I didn’t want to behave, they could always use magic to force me to comply, so why even bother resisting? I honestly think that if they hadn’t died, I might never have escaped their influence.”  
“So it’s true! You did go to their side! What was it like? What was the worst thing they had you do?” A woman sitting across from Cassandra asked, eyes bright with a kind of excitement that both disturbed and irked Kynan. Seriously, what the fuck?  
“I suppose that betraying my city by working as a double agent against the revolution was a big one. Also, attacking my own brother and his friends. But of course you know that’s not the worst of it, don’t you? No, the worst of it would be the things I don’t want to tell anyone about, right? Unfortunately for you and your gossipers, Miss Schrodinger, you count as ‘anyone.’” Cassandra smiled and stood, walking over to the card table. “Deal me in for the next round, gentlemen?”  
Kynan scratched his nose to hide a smirk as he saw the women all whisper to each other, reminding him of a bunch of bewildered chickens with their clucking and flapping of hands. He watched until he noticed that they were beginning to steal glances at him. He could catch snippets of their gossip, “Who is he?” “No, you should ask her, I think she likes you.” “She gives me the creeps.” “Dear girl should really dye that hair of hers.” “Where did she get him though?” “Well I think it was rather considerate of her to bring a little eye candy.”  
He blushed and turned his attention to the conversation at the card table, which seemed to mostly consist of discussions of weather and wheat prospects. Duke Florin seemed to be rather bored with it all, but still managed to steer the conversation. It took Kynan a while to notice, but it seemed to be his tell. Whenever the duke was uncertain of his cards, he brought up a new subject for discussion, as if he were a cat burglar throwing a bone to the guard dogs to sneak his lies past them. Cassandra had noticed this before Kynan had, of course, and was in the midst of bluffing the man into betting a positively obscene amount of money.  
“Lady Cassandra, it’s good to see you again. I haven’t seen you since we danced together at your coming out. I had a grand time, you know,” said one man. Kynan judged him to be in his thirties, thin and pale, with a thin mustache that made him look like a twelve year old entirely too proud of the peach fuzz on his upper lip.  
Cassandra gave him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Is that so? Well I’m glad someone there enjoyed themselves. I honestly don’t remember a lot of faces from that evening, they all sort of blend together.”  
“You didn’t enjoy it? Aren’t those affairs the sort of thing every young girl dreams about?” asked the man.  
“Yes, well, I might have enjoyed myself more if it wasn’t just all for show. The Briarwoods had no intention of actually letting me court or get married, that would mean giving up their control over me. It was all just a lie to make themselves seem legitimate. Now please, I came over here so I wouldn’t have to talk about all of that. Can we discuss something else?”  
“Your man, he’s new, isn’t he? Where did he come from?” Duke Florin asked.  
“Emon, originally. His name is Kynan, a bit green, but he means well, and he’s been quite useful so far. In fact, it’s thanks to him that we are all attending this lovely tea party rather then my own funeral.”  
Kynan stood up straighter, fighting against his instinct to hide from the feeling of having so many eyes on him. He took another lozenge to distract himself.  
“Then you’re lucky to have gotten him when you did, I reckon,” said the duke.  
“Yes, he’s also head of a new line of defence at Whitestone using some items of my brother’s invention. He calls them guns, have you heard of them? Quite impressive really. I’d have him show you his pistol, but the policy is that no guns leave the castle.”  
“Well now that is a damn shame!” said the man who had (apparently) danced with her once. “I would love to have a look at the design. Perhaps I might visit Whitestone to examine these guns you speak of?”  
“Yes, Earl Kress, of course. Any time you wish, you are welcome in my home. Of course, the technique for creating the weapons is proprietary, and if you wanted it to be shared with you, you’d have to talk to my brother, and I don’t know when he will be home or how long he will stay there at any given time.”  
“Then I suppose I shall have to keep visiting until our visits coincide!” Earl Kress said with a grin.  
Cassandra tightened her lips slightly, and then passed it off as a smile. “Yes, please do!” She finished her hand, collected her winnings, and then went back to the circle of gossiping. “I do believe Earl Kress intends to court me.”  
“Oh good! You deserve to be pursued! Not that you should settle for him, Melora’s sake, he’s ten years older than you!” Lady Florin exclaimed.  
“I don’t know,” said Miss Schrodinger. “It might be good for you to go for it, you won’t be marriageable forever, and you have to admit that what with everything you have going on, a lot of men might feel some trepidation about courting you.”  
Cassandra raised her eyebrows. “What is ‘everything I have going on,’ exactly?”  
Miss Schrodinger at least had the small amount of decency it took to be embarrassed. “Oh, well, you know, the troubles of Whitestone, your family being gone, everything with the Briarwoods, it’s a lot of baggage.”  
The woman to Cassandra’s left spoke up again. “You’ve admitted that the Briarwoods controlled you, and given their depravity, there has been some speculation that you may have been corrupted yourself, or… spoiled.”  
Cassandra blinked slowly. “I see. Thank you for your honesty.” She paused a moment, and then stood abruptly. “If you will excuse me for a moment, I think I need to go powder my nose.” She hurried out of the room, and Kynan followed after her, concerned. She stopped at the far end of the hall, a corner that was walled entirely on one side by a panoramic window.  
Kynan caught up with her, but hesitated to draw too close, rather he stayed in the hallway behind her, trying to gauge what she might be feeling. “Are you alright?”  
“I usually enjoy the game of exchanging honey-coated barbs, I can be quite good at it. If only everyone weren’t so obsessed with them. Briarwoods, Briarwoods, I want to forget them, but it seems like they’re all anyone wants to talk to me about. Like… like all I am is a victim, like nothing else really matters.” She was not so much crossing her arms as hugging herself, and Kynan’s heart lurched painfully at how alone she seemed.  
He put his hand on her arm gently. “Tell you what, since we’re already here, why don’t we snoop around and find out what Lady Florin is hiding? She thinks she gets to air your dirty laundry, I say that gives us the right to at least a peek at hers.” He gave Cassandra a hopeful, friendly smile that she returned, if a bit tremulously.  
“It would serve her right, and it would be fun besides,” she admitted.  
“Come on then!” Kynan disappeared himself into one of the discrete servants’ passages. 

Cassandra followed Kynan, bad mood pushed to the back of her mind as she threw herself into the thing she loved. She knew that she was overdressed to pass as a servant, so if they came across any of the other servants they were kind of screwed, but this was still her element.The way her pulse quickened at any noise that might indicate they’d been caught made her feel like she was home.  
Finding their way through the narrow passages that were meant to provide the servants a way to serve quickly and mostly unobserved, it didn’t take long to locate the master bedroom. “You go ahead and snoop around, I’ll stand watch,” Kynan offered.  
Cassandra nodded. “Good, I shouldn’t be more than ten minutes.” She began with the desk, carefully lifting the papers so she could look through them one by one while leaving the top halves still on the desk. She knew that change blindness and human nature were on her side, no one saw a paper out of place and thought “spies!” unless they were extremely paranoid. More likely they would assume that it was the doing of a gust of wind or the household cat or a clumsy maid. Even so, she took care to disturb as little as possible. One clue might not point to spies, but three or four clues would tip off all but the stupidest of marks. Finding nothing of note in the papers, she checked the desk for potential hidden compartments, disappointed to find none.  
She decided to try the bed, pulling the sheets out from under the corners so she could reach her arms between the two mattresses. She felt the corner of something rigid and rectangular. “Yes, score!” She grasped it carefully and extracted it eagerly. Could it be a box of illegal gems, or perhaps drugs? No, it was a diary. Her face fell. Normally a diary would be a gold mine, but she couldn’t read it here, she couldn’t be away from the party for too long, and she couldn’t take it with her without causing suspicion.  
She put the diary back and remade the bed, then moved on to the dresser. At first she thought she had once again come up empty, but then she finally found something. Hidden at the back, behind a lovely pair of dance slippers, were two identical boxes. She slid them open, revealing two pairs of cufflinks, one of simple silver with a design of vines curling around the edges, one of diamonds set in rose gold. “Our Lady Florin is far too smart for her lifestyle, you know. She could have achieved great things, but instead she lives the life of the idle rich. How utterly, maddeningly boring it must be for her. It’s no wonder she drums up drama just to entertain herself, and no wonder she’s having an affair, something has to fill the void where her passion ought to be.”  
“You got that just from two sets of cuff links? Remind me to never let you go through my closet,” Kynan said, sounding impressed. She smiled to him, before carefully placing the boxes exactly as she had found them.  
“You are something of a mystery Kynan, maybe I should snoop on you the next time you fall asleep on some peculiar perch.”  
“Joke’s on you, I don’t have a closet, I only have two sets of clothes.” Kynan stuck his tongue out at her. The childish gesture surprised her, but it kindled a similar childishness in her. She stuck her tongue out right back.  
“Yes well as soon as Emon stops being Thordack central, I’ll go see if I can’t find a butcher with a son named Kynan and ask him for all your secrets. Perhaps I’ll pose as your girlfriend, then I’ll be sure to get all the embarrassing ones!”  
Kynan looked away. “Ready to go?”  
She remembered what he had said about his father the day before, and regretted bringing him up. “Sure,” she said softly. “Let’s go.”  
They began walking back along the servant's’ passage towards the drawing room. The passage was dim, and a little dusty, Cassandra supposed that since they were so busy cleaning the rest of the house, the servants put less priority on cleaning the parts the duke and lady would never see. She could see the light shining from the other side of the door that would take them back into the hall that led to the drawing room, which was lucky, because the shifting of that light was her first signal that someone was coming, a shadow appearing at the bottom of the door as presumably some servant shifted the things they carried to one arm so they could operate the door with the free hand.  
Her mind raced, no place to hide, no way to blend in, what could she do? She heard the sliding door beginning to shift. She turned to Kynan, burying her fear under a false bravado of confidence, making sure that even if she wasn’t certain her idea would work, he would be certain. “Follow my lead,” she told him, voice quiet, tone firm.  
She grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled with enough force to make him come along with her as she put her back to the wall and pulled him towards her. She reached up and kissed him with a theatrical sigh.  
Kynan was frozen at first, but then he softened and began to kiss back. This couldn’t look like a first kiss, Cassandra knew, for the ruse to work. They were secret lovers snuck into the dark passage for an illicit snog, not nervous virgins. She flicked her tongue out, not even pushing it into his mouth, but rather brushing it along his bottom lip. She heard his breathy sigh, and behind it the sound of the door being closed as he took her invitation and slid his tongue into her mouth. She found an involuntary little noise in her throat, and it took her by surprise enough that it managed to escape before she could stop it as he caressed her tongue with his.  
The servant cleared his throat, and she almost wished that he hadn’t, because then they would have had to keep kissing until he was gone. She pushed Kynan away, blushing. “Oh, oh dear, it seems we've been discovered. And just when I thought we’d found some privacy. This is terribly embarrassing.”  
“Ah, my apologies m’lady,” the servant said, not seeming particularly sorry.  
“Oh it's no trouble at all really, it's not like you were interrupting anything. In fact, neither of us were even in here, right?” She reached into her purse and took a handful of gold. She placed it carefully into the servant’s hand.  
“Yes, of course,” the servant agreed. He slipped the gold into his pocket and continued on his way.  
Once they were alone, awkwardness gathered in the air and settled onto their skin like the dust that swirled in motes and lurked in corners of the passage. “Um…” Kynan began, but followed it only with trailing silence.  
“Thank you, for trusting me. Sorry I couldn't think of any better lie on the spot, I realize it must put you into a bit of an awkward situation. If I'd seen another way to fool him, I would have taken it. I think it would probably be best if we both just pretend it didn’t happen.”  
“R-right, of course. That was fast thinking, good thing it worked!”  
Cassandra was already sliding the door open and slipping through. Her lips felt strange, almost heavy, like the pressure of his lips against them was still there somehow. She bit her lip, hoping to erase the sensation by doing so. She hurried into the drawing room, not daring to glance back to see if Kynan were following her.  
“Oh good, you’re back! We were just about to send out search parties. Are you quite alright, dear?” Lady Florin fussed.  
“Yes, fine, thank you,” Cassandra replied graciously. “Just regretting my decision to sample Marquatian cuisine last night. Clearly I should have stuck with a good old fashioned Wildmount dinner.” She chuckled.  
The party didn’t go on too much longer, and yet the time still seemed to drag. Cassandra struggled with herself to keep from sneaking glances at Kynan out of the corner of her eye and mostly losing the battle. Why was she acting this way? She must just be worried, yes, that was it, she was worried that something about his actions might give away their spying, so she couldn’t stop watching him, that must be it. She couldn’t help but be relieved when she finally got home. Claiming extreme exhaustion, she went directly to bed, and lay there with her mind churning until finally sleep, hazy and confused, claimed her for the evening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Coming out, in this situation, refers to a noble lady's official introduction into society, generally for the purpose of letting it be known that she is available for marriage.


End file.
